Social Media Executive Primer Part 3

Define Your Purpose

There are various purposes for social media marketing. Some marketers want to spark a movement while others simply want to use it to support other marketing efforts. It is important to decide what your purpose is in the social media world. Knowing your purpose will help align your strategies.

1. Be a Watch Dog. You can listen to what is being said about your business via social media marketing and use it as a way to police your brand. You might read a negative Tweet about your Customer Service Department and warn them so they can take the appropriate action to resolve the issue. Comcast has excelled at this.

2. Create a Conversation. One of the greatest benefits of social media marketing is it allows you to create a dialog with your customers, partners, prospects, colleagues, etc. The dialog is what builds the relationship and can allow you to benefit from it. The more conversations you have with your customers and prospects, the better you get to know them and their needs – and the better they get to know you and your business. And it can improve your relationship with them if done correctly because they will feel as though you are listening which is vital in any relationship. Use the dialog to do market research, respond quickly when issues arise, build your brand, and more!

3. Ignite a Movement. Some marketers use social media marketing to spark a movement meaning do something profound online that’s highly recognized and that others follow. For instance, Comcast staring using Twitter in 2008 by creating a “ComcastCares” account to target complaints about their services. It then responded to those complaints and worked toward a resolution for each and doing so, improved its customer service. Comcast has been recognized as one of the best companies at utilizing Twitter for B to C interactions. If you have something like this in mind, plan carefully because you may very well lose control once the movement is sparked.

4. Support Other Marketing Efforts. One of the most common purposes for engaging in social media marketing is to use it to support your other marketing efforts. Social media marketing is just another avenue to reach your target, create conversations, build and monitor your brand. If you have an event you want to promote, you can use traditional marketing avenues to promote it such as email, direct mail, banner ads, your website but you can also use social media marketing. It is one of thee cheapest marketing avenues if not thee cheapest. Most social media sites do not charge any fees so why not use them to promote your event? Just keep in mind the target audience for your event and be sure you don’t invite all your Facebook fans if you really only are targeting a small subset of them.

5. Innovate. Some marketers are finding ways to use social media to position themselves as thought leaders and innovators. Social media is, in itself, state-of-the-art marketing and a modern way of communicating so if you can use it to position your leaders and products as innovate, you gain double-time. Not only will your customers and prospects learn about your leaders and products but they will via a means they prefer and that’s most convenient for them such as on their Facebook or Twitter homepage or RSS feed. If you don’t reach out to them via social media, you can bet your competitors are!

Part 1-Social Media: An Executive Primer
Part 2-Define Your Strategy
Part 3-Define Your Purpose
Part 4-Define Your Voice
Part 5-Audience Relationships
Part 6-How to Start
Part 7-Measuring Success
Part 8-Social Media Do’s and Don’ts

Steve Kellogg

-Demand Generation/Marketing Automation Consultant, Astadia
-Eloqua Certified Marketing Best Practices Consultant